Nov 10, 2015 | by Kathy Hudson

Understanding Just How a Used Cooling Tower Works

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Air conditioning is one of those modern conveniences that are enjoyed by nearly everyone and understood by almost no one. Most homeowners can manage their system’s thermostat to keep the house comfortable, but when it comes to explaining just how it lowers the temperature inside the building, they are at a loss. In commercial and industrial applications, the air conditioning process relies on a cooling tower of one kind or another. Understanding the basics of the heat transfer process can help you make a better decision when looking into purchasing a new or used cooling tower for your facility.

Evaporation Is the Key

When you work hard in warm weather, your skin begins to sweat—that is, your body releases moisture to the surface of the skin. As that moisture evaporates, it takes heat with it, lowering the temperature of your skin and thus your body. That’s also the basic concept behind what your used Marley tower does. Instead of using a refrigerant like Freon to cool air, a used cooling tower uses the natural heat transfer of evaporation to do it. The tower exposes warm water to the air, where some of it evaporates and cools the remaining water. Often, this evaporation is visible in the form of white steam—especially if the air is cold and is causing lots of warm water to evaporate at once.

Small and Large Systems

A used cooling tower might be used for a commercial building’s HVAC system or as part of a larger-scale cooling system for an industrial need. Power plants and refineries, for instance, generate immense amounts of heat during normal operation. A newer type of facility, the data center, also generates a surprising amount of heat due to the constant working of thousands of computer processors. That heat must be dissipated, and a used Marley tower is an outlet for that heat into the atmosphere. The cooling water used in the system absorbs the heat, is pumped to the cooling tower, releases the heat through evaporation, and returns to absorb more heat.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Although it is helpful to know some of the science behind the used Marley tower you are looking into purchasing, in the end you want the equipment to be “forgettable.” That is, you want to be able to install it, depend on it to function the way it’s built to, and only give it another thought when it’s time for regular maintenance. It may seem that this kind of reliable performance would be hard to achieve with a used cooling tower as opposed to a new one, but it is possible when the unit has been thoroughly inspected and refurbished if necessary.

Industrial and commercial customers that choose a used cooling tower rather than a new unit invariably find that the cost savings are significant. When working with an experienced, knowledgeable used equipment provider with a large inventory of used Marley towers, water chillers, and other HVAC components, your company can expect to save over half the cost of a new unit.